China Revisited -- 2013 [#4]

WHERE ARE WE GOING?  WHERE HAVE WE BEEN?

In October when we were invited to spend the Christmas Break with Edward's family in China, we named a few places we would like to visit: Beijing, Xian, the Great Wall.  Tibet, via the week-long train ride from Beijing.

Beijing, come to find out, is a four hour plane ride from Shenzhen, where Edward lives.  It is very cold in winter, which would mean packing extra winter clothes, which seemed prohibitive. And the smog this winter has been intense and debilitating.

Xian, site of the life-size clay army, is far from Shenzhen, too, and also cold. Ditto the Great Wall.

Tibet on the train was a joke, although we'd have done it if Edward and his mother had agreed.

Since Edward was not going to plan the itinerary until he had gone home for the break (he attends Syracuse U), we also gave him some general ideas about the kinds of things we would prefer:  old over modern, country over city, the seldom-traveled over the much-trampled tourist meccas, people over most alternatives, traditional Chinese anything over global or western or "fusion" stuff.

Especially, we made a specific request to visit the "home village" Edward has mentioned many times.

With a proper understanding of Chinese and a very detailed map, it is even possible to locate his home village. (To give you an rough idea of where to put your finger on a map of China, Taiwan is approximately behind Yujia's elbow and Hong Kong is approximately behind Edward's.)

With these interests expressed, but no clear sense of where we were going or when or how, beyond the JFK to Hong Kong and the Hong Kong to JFK parts, we departed for China. You might say this was "learn as you go."

Eighteen hours later, most of it in the air and the remainder in line at immigration in Hong Kong, we found Edward waiting for us.

You've got to love a city with buses that carry "sincerity" and "eternity" signs on the back.  From Hong Kong we crossed the bridge and stopped for another border crossing to enter the mainland.

The border crossing is more involved than this toll station, but not a lot more involved. It is rather like crossing into Canada from Buffalo, New York.

We rested from our long flights at the Edward's home, then from Shenzhen we traveled north and east about three hours drive to see the Yuanshan Temple in Lufeng.

Then on to Luhe, the town near the villages we would be visiting. Edward's family owns an apartment building there. Like their big home in Shenzhen, this building has room for much of the extended family. In fact, his father's older brother and family occupies the second floor.

From Edward's family residence in this town we took daily trips out to see the mountains and the villages that his parents were born and raised in.  First his mother's village . . .

 Then his father's . . .

I will have more to say about both of these villages in later blogs; but for this thumbnail sketch they must just be points on the map.

After three days of town and village life we drove back to Shenzhen.  From there we went to Guangzhou, as we did during out 2011 visit, where we ate with a lot of people we know, toured several old treasures, and sat in traffic.

At this point we were nearing the end. We went back to Shenzhen to pack and then to Hong Kong for a day before heading back for New York.

Day to day we knew generally where we might be heading, but often we waited for Edward to say, "We're leaving now," which was sometimes preceded by animated conversation in Chinese and sometimes came out of the blue.  Gradually as we became seasoned travelers, we knew the drill: grab your coat, put on your shoes, and wait at the door.

There it is in a nutshell, a succession of surprises and priceless experiences. In retrospect, the trip that rolled out before us one surprising moment at a time looks straightforward and easy.

And far too short!

China Revisited -- 2013 [#2]

The Chop Sticks Diet


Traveling to China may not be the big deal it used to be.  Every town in the U.S. -- well, in fact, in much of the world -- now has Chinese students from somewhere on the mainland. Chinese from Taiwan, once common, are now the exception rather than the rule.

Nevertheless, for anyone old enough to remember Richard Nixon's famous trip to Beijing,  China is the exotic center of the world. It seems somehow pre-historic. Before Nixon's visit, we understood Beijing's Forbidden City to mean, essentially, forbidden to Americans. Fixed in my mind are the Mao jackets, the small-brimmed caps with the red star, and the bicycle-crowded boulevards. The images are all in black and white.

Now, of course, the memory itself is an anachronism.

Still, the lure of China remains strong.  Thus, when the invitation to visit China was extended, we could not not say "yes!"

On the day before we were to leave, with bags packed, house tidied, fears restrained, we began to feel a bit of trepidation. What if the winter storm that was forecast arrived sooner than expected and delayed or cancelled our first, short flight to JFK?  What if Donna's cold, already creating a bit of congestion suddenly got worse?  What if?  What if?

What if we just don't fit in?

I had thought for a number of years that I would learn Mandarin, so that we could function once we made our long anticipated voyage.  But somehow my several attempts were brief, frustrating, and eventually abandoned. I got as far as "thank you."

During that same forward-looking period, I decided to learn how to use chopsticks. To do this, I first tried observing experts, which is to say, our Asian students. I discovered two things. One is that they all preferred forks to chopsticks. Two is that on the infrequent occasions they did take up the wooden skewers, they invariably told me, "Don't copy my style. It is improper."

Undeterred, I taught myself, properly, from one of those red paper sleeves that bamboo restaurant chopsticks come in.  It was easy to position the chopsticks, hard to make them work.  While I was learning, struggling first to get food off the plate, then struggling to get it into my mouth instead of on my shirt, I became convinced that Americans would be thinner and healthier on the whole if we were all forced to use chopsticks. A nationwide chopsticks diet would address our obesity problem!

Gradually, however, I worked my way past the dropped rice, the stick flying off across the table, and the hand cramps. Technique and practice.  I can't quite snatch a fly out of the air like the Karate master, but I am, with quiet modesty PDG (pretty darn good) bordering on QE (quite excellent).  I can seize a rolling grape, pluck individual rice grains from a flat surface, and roll spaghetti as if it were a fork.

OK, so the chopsticks won't help me when I need to ask where the bathroom is, but it does make me feel a bit more at ease about the trip.

The night before we were to leave I mentioned to my daughter, the nurse, over the phone that I was hoping her mother wasn't going to get sicker.

"It's a cold, Pop." She replied without hesitation. "Give her meds and get her on the plane!"

After all, China is not an option every day.